I am excited about this year's European campaign, but not because Luiz Felipe Scolari's side have already got one foot in the knockout stage, or because Manchester United have been forced onto the back foot after two points dropped at home to Villareal.

What excites me this season is the new teams involved in the competition, particularly from eastern and southern Europe, that suggests the rich-getting-richer culture that is engulfing football has not managed to exclude the less-fortunate teams just yet.

A host of new names have replaced some established veterans in football's richest competition.

There is no AC Milan this time, nor is there an Ajax, or a Benfica.

Straight away, the race to compete in the 54th European Cup final is devoid of three 'giants' who have won the competition 13 times between them.

Instead, we have Bate Borisov and Anorthosis Famagusta of Cyprus and Romanians CFR Cluj-Napoca.

Zenit St Petersburg are welcome additions, particularly after their deserved UEFA Cup success in May when their breathtaking football was head and shoulders above anything western Europe had to offer.

Steaua Bucharest are back in the Champions League group stage, and alongside Red Star Belgrade, remain the only two teams from the old eastern bloc to have lifted Europe's most prized trophy.

While these five sides do not have the money to compete with Europe's elite – which in recent years has dwindled down to the four English clubs and Real Madrid and Barcelona – they have at least shown they have the technical ability to be deserving of a place at European football's top table.

And should not that be what it is all about?

Zenit, as already mentioned, were the best side to watch in Europe last season, and the peculiarly named CFR Cluj-Napoca announced their arrival with the shock 2-1 win over those pariahs of patient Italian football Roma.

It was a result that further enhanced the belief that Italian football is nowadays too slow and too entrenched in its own negative ways, and is therefore being left behind by the free-flowing attacking football the continent is fast becoming accustomed to.

Cluj's victory came in the Stadio Olympico, which in eight months' time will host the Champions League final.

The Romanians are unlikely to be there, as are Famagusta, Bate, Dynamo Kiev or even Bruce Rioch's Aalborg of Denmark, who earned a creditable point at Celtic on Wednesday.

By that stage, money will have spoken and Manchester United, Barcelona and Chelsea will be vying for that famous piece of silverware.

That is not to detract from the football Europe's 'giants' serve up. If Zenit were deserved UEFA Cup winners last season, the Barcelona managed by Frank Rijkaard and orchestrated by Ronaldinho in 2006 were the undoubted kings of Europe that season.

Football played at breakneck speed when players have no time to dally on the ball, owes much to the English game and a law that passed almost two decades ago which triggered the change in tempo of football matches – the abolishment of the back pass.

English teams have become the great exponents of the art of high-tempo football.

But the quality of football no longer separates the great from the good in the English game.

The 'big four' are in the Champions League every year purely because of the money they generate from that very competition.

The chasm between fourth and fifth in the Premier League, is as big as the gulf between top flight and Championship.

Fortunately, that divide is not as apparent in the Champions League.

Yes, the trophy will be won this season by one of those six big clubs, with maybe Lyon, Juventus and Bayern Munich having a say.

But at least the route to the final will take them through some unchartered football backwaters, against names that renew the hope that football is about what happens on the pitch, not in the boardroom.


Hamilton to bypass the road blocks on way to F1 title glory


JUST when is looked as though Formula 1 was getting interesting again – it goes and ties a noose around its neck with political red tape.

As if a championship with more twists and turns than the Nurburgring itself, with the lead changing hands four times and a new star emerging through the rain at Monza was not excitement enough, the authorities had to go and throw their weight around.

Lewis Hamilton, Britain's first big hope of producing a world champion since Damon Hill in 1996, leads the Formula 1 drivers' championship by one point.

It could and should be at least seven after his demotion from a win in Spa at the Belgian Grand Prix to third after he was adjudged to have undertaken his title rival Felipe Massa.

Hamilton was penalised for the move and demoted from first to third, while Massa was promoted from second to first, and, therefore, afforded the most hollow of victories.

The Ferrari driver will not have minded, however. Instead of being seven points behind his McLaren opponent with four races to go, he sits just one point adrift.

Hamilton, 23, makes his case to an FIA jury in Paris today, before jetting off to the first of the last four races in Singapore on Sunday.

Feeling around the pit lane is reported to be against Hamilton winning the appeal and thus restoring his seven-point cushion.

What a surprise. Why would the drivers, or rather their paymasters, want an increased gap at the top of the leaderboard when they can generate further interest with an exciting title race.

Hamilton will be growing accustomed to steering around road blocks in his short history of trying to win the world championship.

In his rookie season, he had to contend with the petulance of team-mate Fernando Alonso.

Twelve months later and he has to contend with the FIA and their regulations.

Hamilton will be champion one day, maybe in a few weeks' time, and when he is, he will acknowledge the many road blocks he has had to negotiate to reach the top as all being part of the learning curve.


Sheffield holds successful blueprint for London Games


BEIJING finally closed for business in the global marketplace after five long weeks in the global public spotlight.

The Olympics already seems a fading memory, a blur of gold medals fading into the Chinese capital's smog.

The torch has passed to London, or rather Boris Johnson the city's mayor, and so begins our nation's capital's bid to host the grandest global spectacle in living memory.

Hardly a week will pass in the next 48 months without London 2012 being mentioned by either Johnson, Lord Sebastian Coe or Sue Barker.

That is how it should be, but London 2012 should also have a legacy and in Sheffield, I believe the London organisers have a ready-made blueprint.

The Olympic stadium must become a national arena beyond the 2012 Games.

Too much money is going into London 2012 from taxpayers' pockets for the Stretford venue to become a ghost town within six months, as has happened in past Olympic host cities like Athens (2004) and Montreal (1976).

Sheffield hosted the World Student Games in 1991, with the council funding a purpose-built stadium in Don Valley as the event's centrepiece.

Seventeen years later, the cost to the local community is still being rued by some in the borough, but the World Student Games left a legacy that transformed Sheffield into the sporting capital of the north.

Okay, Manchester can easily stake a claim to that title with two of the richest clubs in Europe, the Commonwealth Stadium and cycling's velodrome, but this is Yorkshire – and I'm biased.

The World Student Games was a roaring success when it visited Sheffield, with local punters afforded front-row seats to some of the best sporting action the city has enjoyed.

A young Michael Johnson won the 200m on the track before going on to win four Olympic golds, and there was some fantastic action in the pool as well.

And although it may have taken more than a decade, Sheffield has emerged from the World Student Games with a sterling sporting legacy.

The Don Valley Stadium became the home of northern international athletics meetings in the 1990s – many an athlete crumbled in the McVities Challenge.

The stadium is still in use now by football's Rotherham United, following their departure from Millmoor, and rugby league's Sheffield Eagles, and the whole area of Attercliffe has been regenerated through sport with the construction of the Sheffield Arena, iceSheffield and the fantastic facility at the English Institute of Sport, all within a javelin throw of each other.

The EIS not only houses athletics tracks and basketball courts, but is the training centre for Great Britain's Olympic boxers.

Pond's Forge, the swimming venue in the centre of the
Steel City, continues to thrive as a public facility and a regular host to national and international events as well as being a base for the British Olympic diving team.

Sheffield is a thriving sporting city – granted at least one of the football teams could do with being in the Premier League – and that is thanks to the legacy of the World Student Games.

The hope is that the authorities take that on board, and come 2029, we can say that the London 2012 Olympics did the east London suburb of Stretford the power of good.